The present invention relates in general to gangways for rail vehicles, and in particular to a new and useful gangway which can compensate for pivotal and lengthwise movements between the adjacent ends of a pair of railway cars.
Passengers as well as train personnel in railway cars should be able to pass between the car units of a train even during the trip. To make this passage possible, passageways are located between the car units that ordinarily consist of a passable gangway and a vestibule surrounding it, for example a gangway bellows.
The relative motions occurring between the ends of the cars that face each other during operation, must not be obstructed either by the vestibule or by the gangway. In particular, the passageway must be able to compensate for the wobbling motions, the pitching motions, lateral and vertical motions, and motions in the longitudinal direction of the car, between the ends of the car units, with the passability of the passageway being guaranteed under normal operating conditions.
A passageway is disclosed by German Patent No. 640,970 that consists of two floor plates, that are placed to pivot around a horizontal axis at each end of the car at floor level, and with the floor plates overlapping in the position of use. In these known gangways, the narrow cross section of the gangway which is present between the bumpers is severely restricted in case of relative motions between the ends of the cars. In the same way, the gangway can only partly compensate for possible relative motions between the ends of the cars, with large relative motions also occurring at the overlapping edges. Rather great unevenness or steps, or even open gaps can form.
The two-part gangway for passage between two railway cars or units pivoted to one another described in German patent application disclosure No. 33 05 062 has a number of essentially rigid rails extending parallel to one another that are flexibly connected to one another at prescribed distances. Each of the two halves of a bridge are connected rigidly at one end to a car unit, and at the other end, i.e. in the center of the passageway, they are connected rigidly to one another, with the rails being supported vertically at their end areas to pivot on supporting rods running in the longitudinal direction of the car and secured against lateral motions and motions in the direction of their longitudinal axis.
Because the gangway has to absorb all relative motions itself, costly construction cannot be avoided, and in particular the rigid linking of the halves of the bridge to the ends of the cars facing one another also proves to be a drawback.
gangway pursuant to a German supplementary patent application German application disclosure No. 34 01 298) enlarging on the aforementioned application also does not avoid the drawbacks mentioned, but essentially changes only the design of the rails.